Ebook: Minstrel disguise in Medieval French narrative: Identity, performance, authorship

This study examines questions of identity, performance, and authorship that medieval French narratives raise when characters disguise themselves as minstrels. In minstrel disguise, issues of identity are magnified because a character assumes the mask of the protean minstrel, a shape shifter and boundary crosser who himself epitomizes ambiguity and plurality of identity. The episode of minstrel disguise is the key moment in a narrative when we, as readers or auditors, witness the process by which an author constructs the character of the proteiform performer. Unlike other kinds of disguise found in medieval literature, minstrel disguise enables the author to create and define the identity of an artist whose craft includes the composition and transmission of narrative, an art that overlaps or is intertwined with that of both the author and the performer.

Since they highlight performance and the narrative art, representations of minstrel disguise invite analysis of authorial attitudes towards and perceptions of the professional performer, performance, and authorship. Such episodes enable us to examine how the construction and deconstruction of minstrel identity—which occur in scenes of masking, unmasking, and recognition—affect plot, structure narrative, and generate meaning. In addition, our study explores how authors perceive and present the protagonists who don minstrel disguise—including such principal medieval characters as Tristan, King Arthur, and Renart the Fox. Our subject also leads us to analyze how characters within our narratives interpret signs of identity and what those modes of interpretation reveal about characters and their relations to each other. Although we refer to a corpus of fifteen narratives, our analysis concentrates on a few select texts: the Folie Tristan of Oxford, Gerbert de Montreuil's Continuation de Perceval, branch Ib of the Roman de Renart, Ysaÿe le Triste, and Le Chevalier du Papegau.

Our study adds a literary dimension to the body of scholarship on minstrels and minstrelsy which to date has focused primarily on historical and social realities. We focus on the minstrel and his art as authorial constructs that invite exploration of literary questions, including issues of disguise, performance, and literary composition, as raised by authors of narrative fiction.